


Ripple Effect

by dragons_SRSunn



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Pre-Canon, Pre-Charmed Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27534256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragons_SRSunn/pseuds/dragons_SRSunn
Summary: Gwendolen Chant needs to convince her parents to let her have magic lessons.
Kudos: 7





	Ripple Effect

**Author's Note:**

> This was really written by a friend who was too shy to get her own account.

Gwendolen Chant stomped down the narrow hallway, fuming.

Her brother, Cat, saw her coming. His eyes widened. "Gwendolen?" he asked nervously. "What-?"

Gwendolen shoved him aside with her shoulder, stormed into her room, and slammed the door.

How could they? How could they do this to her? She was a witch! She was gifted! She was the most powerful young witch on Coven Street this century, so Mr. Nostrum had said!

All right, yes, much of her power came from Cat, but no one else had thought of using his magic for themselves, had they? Not even Cat himself. Even her parents didn't know the full extent of the power their son had.

Gwendolen knew. She had been aware of her little brother's power ever since she could remember, and using it for almost that long. It came naturally to her now. She simply _tugged_ on the threads of magic she always felt, like a constant buzzing in her ears. Cat never even noticed.

She'd put his lives into the matchbox when she was five. She hadn't known that they were his actual lives then. She'd thought that they were the force of his magic or something, and he had nine for some reason while everyone else had only one, which was why his magic was so much more powerful than everyone else's. she could feel that, even then.

She'd begun using his magic when she was about four. It was so much easier than using her own, and so much more powerful. Everyone had thought it was all her. She'd basked in her father's proud looks, in her mother's rare, delighted smile.

But Eric was an energetic toddler who liked to wander around everywhere, and the farther away he was the harder it was to use his magic. She needed to keep his magic with her at all times, but she couldn't drag him around with her _all_ the time. It wasn't as if she could carry him around with her in a rucksack or something(the one time she'd tried had been a disaster). No, Gwendolen decided, the best solution would be to put the source of his magic _in_ something, something small and unnoticeable that could be carried around easily.

She hadn't chosen the matchbox for any specific reason-it had simply been a small convenient object she'd noticed. She'd taken all the matches out except nine, deciding that each of Eric's nine magics would live in one.

Then she'd realized that while eight of the magics within her brother were strong and vibrant, one was hollow, empty, dead. It gave her a shivery feeling to use the magic near it. Something must have happened to it. She had decided that the matches must correspond to Cat's magics as closely as possible, and so she had taken the first match and lit it. 

Like all responsible parents, Caroline Chant had cautioned her children, ever since they were very young, not to play with matches for no reason. But therein lay the flaw- _for no reason._ Gwendolen believed she had a very good reason.

Her pudgy fingers scraped the match against the side of the box, once, twice, three times(i looked so easy when her parents did it)until finally the tip of the match had blossomed into flame, the red head blackening under the heat, the center of the small flame yellow-white, darkening near the edges.

Gwendolen stared at the flame, transfixed, as its burning heat crept closer and closer to her fingers, the end of the match twisting and blackening-and then it went out.

Gwendolen felt almost disappointed, and had wanted to light another one. But she resisted the urge. These matches had a job to do, she reminded herself.

She carefully put the burnt match back in the matchbox and went to find her brother.

She waited until her father had gone to work and her mother had said, "Gwendolen, I'm going out for a moment-be a big girl and keep an eye on Eric, will you?" and then went out.

Most parents would not leave their five-year-old daughter in charge of their three-year-old son. But Gwendolen was a very bright and mature young girl. And Caroline was only going out to the market for a moment. And she had no one to ask to watch her children. Her husband was at work. Mrs. Sharp from downstairs meant well, but truthfully, Caroline didn't fully trust her. And it wasn't as if she could ask a family member to watch her children for her. Most of her family had disowned her and Francis when they had married, and the one that hadn't was no longer on speaking terms with her husband. Not that she blamed him, really. Francis, that was, not Christopher. How could Christopher suggest such a thing-to a Chant, no less! And him the Chrestomanci!

And so Gwendolen and Eric were left alone for about five minutes.

A very fateful five minutes, it turned out.

First Gwendolen went and got the matchbox from where she'd hidden it(in the back corner of her rickety old wardrobe). Then she told Eric to sit on the sofa and not to move.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I said so," she replied. "Now sit right there."

"What's that?" he asked, his gaze falling on the matchbox in her hand.

"Mine," she told him firmly.

"But we're not s'posed to-" he started, but before he could finish Gwendolen felt for his magic, and _reached_ -and _pulled_ -and _yanked_ -

And suddenly Eric was screaming, screaming, a terrible high-pitched wailing, screaming as though he was dying, his hands clutching his stomach, his eyes wide and terrified.

Her mother threw the door open and raced in, having heard Eric's screaming while on the stairs. " _Eric!_ " she shrieked upon seeing her son, dropping her half-full basket to the floor, its contents flying everywhere. "What _happened?!_ "

She bent over him and muttered something, wringing her hands-no, she wasn't wringing them. She was moving them in the same pattern, over and over.

She was casting a spell.

Gwendolen waited eagerly, but nothing happened.

Her mother tried again, and again, but still nothing happened. Her face was beaded with sweat.

The door crashed open again, and her father ran in(how had he gotten home so fast? How had he known he needed to be home in the first place?). He took in the situation at a glance and rushed over to his son and his wife, trying to use a spell to immobilize Eric's flailing arms and legs while Caroline tried her spell again. But nothing worked.

Suddenly Eric's face was grey, and he made a funny little wheezing noise and was quiet, lying still. His silence and stillness were somehow more frightening than the screaming and flailing of a moment ago had been.

Gwendolen felt a sudden burning heat in the hand she was holding the matchbox in.

Gwendolen's mother put her ear to Eric's chest, than his mouth. Apparently she didn't hear whatever it was she was listening for, because she began to weep. Gwendolen's father sank to his knees, staring at the limp body of his son, his face almost as grey as Eric's was. He took a deep breath and started, "Chrest-"

Then Eric gasped, color flooding back into his face. He began to cry, but it wasn't the eerie wailing of a moment ago. It was the regular cries of a frightened and bewildered but otherwise healthy toddler.

Caroline clutched him to her, weeping even harder than before, saying "My baby, my baby," over and over, while Francis looked ten years younger than he had a moment ago, a look on his face that Gwendolen could never fully describe, even years later.

Her parents did not know exactly what had happened. Gwendolen thought they assumed that she had been playing around with her magic, but being a very young and inexperienced witch, something had gone wrong and hurt Eric. Gwendolen remembered whispered discussions and a hurried letter-writing, but nothing ever came of that. They forbade Gwendolen from doing magic unless she was under strict supervision. 

Eric, being only three years old at the time, was left later with no memory of the incident except for the pain of the stomach cramps and the knowledge that Gwendolen had had something to do with it. This was part of the reason why he always did his older sister's bidding-because of the lingering fear in his subconscious that if he didn't do what she wanted, she would do it again.

It was a while before Gwendolen fully understood what she had done that day. She first started to put the pieces together when she realized that a second match had burned during Eric's cramps. And now there were _two_ empty magics inside him, whereas earlier there had only been one. It seemed that the matches corresponded to the magic inside Eric even more than Gwendolen had intended.

She couldn't believe how close she'd come to disaster. What if _all_ the magic inside Eric had burned up when she had put it in the matches? Then she would have destroyed her main source of power for nothing! 

She first began to realize what the matches now truly were when she overheard her mother telling a friend about how Eric had almost died when he was born. Gwendolen hadn't known that before.

That discovery brought her mind back to the other time Eric had almost died, with the cramps.

Then she realized...two times he had nearly died. Two empty magics inside him. Two burnt matches.

What if he hadn't merely almost died? What if he had _actually_ died? And then come back to life? What if the multitudes of magic she could sense in him were not merely his magic, but his actual lives?

Somehow, he had more lives than anyone else-nine, to be exact, or at least that was how many he'd had originally-which must be why his magic was so much more powerful than anyone else's.

And she had managed to put them all inside a matchbox.

It gave her a heady feeling of power, to know that she literally held her brother's life-her brother's _lives_ -in her hand. Sometimes she toyed with the idea of lighting another match, just to see what would happen, and to experiment with its magic. But she always decided against it, albeit reluctantly. Her parents would notice if Eric died again, and besides, the more lives she had, the more of his magic she could use.

It made her angry, sometimes, to sense the enormity of his power. Why wasn't _she_ the one with nine lives, instead of _him_ -her stupid, nervous, untalented little brother, who didn't even know that he _had_ magic, let alone how to use it?

It never occurred to Gwendolen that perhaps the reason her brother didn't know how to use his magic was because she never let him.

It was around the time she had her epiphany about the full extent of her brother's powers that Gwendolen began calling him Cat.

_He has nine lives. Just like cats do in stories. And they're all mine._

Now Gwendolen stomped around her room angrily. She kicked the wall in frustration, and then had to hop over to her bed cradling her foot because kicking the wall had hurt. This did not improve her mood.

She glared at the wall. She could vaporize it or something, she supposed. That would show them how powerful she was. But no; it would be too flashy, she would need magical ingredients she didn't have, and her parents would then be even more unlikely to agree to her request than they already were. _"A good witch has self-control, Gwendolen."_

Besides, than her room would open right into Cat's room, and she could do without him rummaging through all her things. In her family's small flat, she needed her space.

Gwendolen lay down on her bed and glared at the ceiling. She was bright! She was talented! She could do amazing things with magic that wasn't even hers! How could her parents refuse her request for magic lessons?

"Maybe when you're older, dear," her mother had said.

"Money is tight now," her father had added. (Money was _always_ tight.) "Besides, we can teach you as well as any other witch or warlock can."

 _Except you don't teach me,"_ Gwendolen thought grumpily. _That's the problem._

Her parents scarcely taught her any magic, except the barest basics that any five-year-old with magic would know. In fact, Gwendolen realized, they'd hardly taught her anything since Cat's cramps. She got the impression that they were nervous about what she would do if she gained any more skill in magic.

Which was ridiculous, Gwendolen thought. Surely if she was taught how to properly use magic she would become more skillful, and make no mistakes? She was older and wiser now. If she had to transfer Cat's lives again, she was almost certain she would be able to do it without using any of his lives, so now magic would be wasted.

Gwendolen needed to learn magic, and one thing was certain:She would never be able to do it here, under her parents' thumb, trudging to and from school each day and going nowhere else.

She needed to go out into the world. She needed to meet people. She needed to make connections, like those contacts in London Mrs. Sharp was always talking about.

In short, she needed an opportunity.

Gwendolen's opportunity came sooner than she expected.

Three days after her request for magic lessons had been denied(Cat was still glancing at her nervously out of the corner of his eye, as though afraid she would throw another tantrum)her parents informed her and Cat at supper that next week they were going on a boat trip.

"A _boat_ trip?" Cat asked, eyes wide, his fork dangling limply in his hand. "Like, on a real boat?"

"Of _course_ on a real boat," Gwendolen told him scathingly. "It would hardly be called a boat if it was a train, would it?"

"Yes, dear, on a real boat," Gwendolen's mother told Cat fondly. "We'll all be going down the river and back on a paddleboat steamer. Won't that be a fun day trip?"

"It's called the Saucy Nancy," Gwendolen's father added. "You might have seen it advertised in the paper."

Gwendolen looked at her parents suspiciously. How did her father know that she regularly convinced the paper-boy to lend her a paper(i.e. threaten to hex him if he didn't)for a few moments so she could look for magic-lesson advertisements?

More to the point, why were they suddenly going on a boat trip? Gwendolen's family was not the kind of family that went on "fun day trips" for no reason. Wasn't money supposed to be tight? And what kind of name was Saucy Nancy anyway?

Then Gwendolen noticed the looks her parents were giving each other, and the covert looks they were giving _her_ when they thought she wasn't looking, and she realized what this was all about.

This boat trip-which, admittedly, sounded enjoyable-had everything to do with her recent request for magic lessons. It was meant to be a replacement, a bribe. As in, _You forget all about wanting to learn magic and we'll take you on a nice outing every now and then._

As if a boat trip could replace learning _real magic_.

Gwendolen was about to confront her parents when she realized that this could be the opportunity she had been looking for. While not quite what she had expected, a boat trip was at least something unusual, something out of the normal everyday routing, a chance for her to meet new people or experiment with magic that she couldn't do at home or school. She would be a fool to waste this opportunity.

And so Gwendolen smiled angelically, kissed her mother on the cheek, and said, "Thank you, both of you. A boat trip sounds delightful."

The next day Gwendolen waited until both her parents had gone out, then locked Cat in the closet so he wouldn't bother her, sat down with a pen and paper, and waited for inspiration to strike. If she was going to cast a spell that would make her parents realize that she had to have magic lessons, it would have to be a good one.

And of course, she didn't _know_ most of the good ones because _she hadn't had magic lessons_. Gwendolen gritted her teeth.

If she was going to work magic on a boat, the spell would work a lot better if it was boat- or water-related, since spells tended to work better in their natural environment. This ruled out several of her more likely options, but she still had what to work with.

Rivers had fish. Something to do with fish, maybe. She could make all the scales on all the fish nearby fall off.

No-too simple. Any beginner could do that. Besides, all the passengers would be in the boat, not in the river with the fish. No one would notice.

Make all the fish fly up into the air? But then the fish would fall, right onto the boat and everyone on it. Gwendolen did not think she would appreciate live, flapping fish falling on her, even for a worthy cause. Her parents wouldn't like it either, and then they would just be angry.

Enough about fish. Turn the water to blood? Too classic.

Split the river? That was _also_ classic. Besides, then the boat would be stuck, stranded on the land at the bottom of the river between the two walls of water, and when those walls of water finally merged a gain, the force would crush the boat, sink it...

Gwendolen paused.

_Sink it._

_Yes,_ Gwendolen thought. _That should work._ Sinking the boat-that would be the perfect spell to show her parents what kind of magic she could do:Powerful magic. And dangerous. They would _have_ to let her have magic lessons after that.

She smiled, and began to write down the ingredients for the spell she would need.


End file.
